Not every one wants to work for a dot com.

Not every young person wants to work for a dot.com. Brian Shaw got intrigued with the idea of working for Esteel Corp., an online steel exchange based in New York. A process engineer at USX's U.S. Steel Group, Shaw was fascinated that steel marketing could be moved to the Internet.

But not fascinated enough. After seeing Esteel's presentation at an industry conference, Shaw decided to keep his job in the smokestack economy rather than work for the dot.com. He certainly didn't stay for the money. His starting salary at the plant in Gary, Ind. had been just $38,500. No bonus, no stock options. He figured he could learn more and go further in a steel mill than at a risky startup. And after two years at U.S. Steel, Shaw, 29, is now a manager in quality assurance. "I like the fact that it can be a hands-on job," he says. "You don't have to stare at a computer for eight hours a day."

If any industry should have problems finding good help, you'd think steel would be at the top of the list, both because of a shortage of engineering majors and because steel is not a growth industry.
Yet here's the surprise: U.S. Steel, at least, has fared pretty well in landing job prospects. And in the past several decades it hasn't changed a thing in the way it recruits. It still trolls at only about a dozen engineering schools, like Michigan Tech and the University of Pittsburgh. It still offers extensive internships. It still gives research grants to professors with the expectation that they will refer top students.

The result is that of every three college seniors given an offer to become a manager trainee, two accept, says recruiting head Richard Schinagl. And for every ten interns hired, nine are still with the company five years later. This, despite starting pay of around $45,000 for a metallurgical engineer, barely competitive with an e-company salary and of course utterly lacking the kind of option payoff expected from an e-company.

If smokestack companies can't offer untold riches, they can offer quick advancement to young people. Downsizing in the 1980s shrank middle management at lots of outfits. So Eleanor Mulcahy, 28, got promoted to area manager for National Steel Corp. after just five years. She regularly heads back to her alma mater, Michigan Technical University, to recruit other metallurgical engineers.

Clearly, these folks just aren't awed by the Internet. Schinagl says that when students do turn down U.S. Steel's offers, they tend to go to other manufacturing jobs. He recalls losing just one student to Andersen Consulting.

And for some people, like Shaw, nothing can beat the rush of a "dirty" job on the floor of a steel mill.
 
 

Source:  Chana Schoenberger, Forbes, April 03, 2000